A 'Trying' time leads to satisfaction

April 01, 2004|By Michael Phillips, Tribune theater critic.

Joanna McClelland Glass once served as secretary for Francis Biddle, U.S. attorney general during World War II, chief judge at the Nuremberg trials -- and judging from Glass' modest, leisurely play "Trying," a fusspot in his later years with one of Those Egos, simultaneously fragile and immense.

From an earlier one-act, Glass expanded her 1967-68 experiences with Biddle to full-length form. The result, the world premiere of which is now at Victory Gardens Theater, is a two-hander that is decent in every sense. It's not a throttler; it's an ambler. It's schematic too. When Biddle utters things like, "All I wanted was an obedient, pliable clerk for a period of one year! You are not pliable. You are the most trying individual I have ever had the misfortune to know," you know renewed mutual respect between the Philadelphia blueblood and his Saskatchewan-bred helpmate is right around the corner.

But this is where actors come in. As Biddle, the estimable Fritz Weaver has a high old time without having too much of a high old time. With that rich basso profoundo vocal instrument, not to mention a head of hair that can only be described as "patrician," even if Weaver weren't a fine actor he'd be fine.

Opposite Weaver, Kati Brazda plays the authorial stand-in named Sarah Schorr. "Trying" begins with Sarah, alone, in Biddle's office, above the garage of his Washington, D.C., Georgetown home. The great man is heard offstage, making his way up the stairs. He introduces himself. "I am ill unrelievedly," he says, explaining why Sarah interviewed for the job with Biddle's wife, the poet Katherine Garrison Chapin.

Biddle is no romp in the park, and he knows it.

His memory falters. He has driven his share of employees away, in tears, for good. A fire, destroying many of his valued papers and books, has left him with a sour taste regarding the secretary whose mishandling of the gas heaters caused the blaze -- and all secretaries by association.

Sarah, however, draws on her self-described "prairie populist" attitude as she overcomes each slight and insult. (Never mind that anyone referring to herself as a prairie populist might, on some level, be asking for it.)

As Biddle works on his memoirs -- first with Sarah taking dictation, later by way of a newfangled tape recorder -- he finds himself thinking on his losses and regrets in life, chiefly his long-dead son, and his personal compromises regarding the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans.

"Trying," to its credit, doesn't pump up the comedy or the drama. Even when the individual exchanges sound more like the stuff of theater than the stuff of life, especially when Sarah starts lecturing Biddle about his principles, playwright Glass guides her characters with a civil hand.

Tall and wide-eyed, slightly unsettling in her intensity, Brazda's Sarah is almost eerily precise whilst executing quotidian duties (typing, filing, defending her Canadian-ness). Brazda gives a strong performance, albeit one carrying an undercurrent: Is this woman about to EXPLODE?

A little more less might be helpful. Also Brazda's dialect comes and goes. But she's a unique and intriguing presence.

Weaver may bobble a line or three, but the topspin he gives such simple rejoinders as "Madam, you are bold," is enough to destroy any objections. Thanks largely to this 78-year-old stage veteran, who has obviously learned a lot about winning over an audience without sucking up to one, "Trying" is trying only now and then, and quite satisfying on its own terms most of the rest of the way.